Week One of Work

So, my weekend starts today! Not bad, huh? It's been a trying week, but I made it through all right.

This week I started teaching conversation classes of 3 to 11 students. The majority of the students have chosen to meet with me and want to practice learning English...for the most part, haha. My instructions were simple: "make them talk". This week was pretty difficult because it's really my first experience being in control of an entire class, albeit a small one, of students, and having to prepare classes without specific grammar or vocabulary concepts. Each group of students has both a focus of study and a designation of either seconde, premier or terminal: the system doesn't really correspond to the US system, but for simplicity sake we'll say that they are either sophomores, juniors or seniors. I have one group that's post-bac, which is much like studying for an associate's degree.

So with all these different levels it was really difficult to guess what media I should use to fuel discussion. I opened each class with an ice-breaker such as "tell me your name, where you live, a hobby, and 2 adjectives to describe Joigny" or "if you were a pizza topping what would you be" or "if you had the day off, what would you do". Really only the last one worked because a lot of the students don't live in Joigny and the concept of a pizza topping and imagining yourself as a food item didn't go over so big. This week has been an exercise in trial and error.

I've tried word games, riddles, pictures, songs, comics and articles this week, and I think I'm learning little by little what is going to work with each group. But, this is a lot more work than I thought I was going to be doing. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying I didn't expect this much.

Yesterday was an excercise in culture shock for me again. I went back to the france telecom/orange boutique to ask for internet again armed with my bank account information, the name of the last assistant who had internet in the apartment, and my passport. After waiting in line for another 20 minutes, the woman told me I would still need an official certificat saying that I live in the lycée and another form saying that I work at the lycée. I'm just not used to this. The last time we took the bus that only comes every hour to the boutique they were on strike, this time I had to wait for an hour for the bus empty-handed to go to another boutique where I got a better deal and signed up to get internet installed in the apartment on the 28th of october. Still quite a shock because in the US you would expect to get internet installed within the week, right? but there are miles of red tape in the France and I took a deep breath and tried to accept that at least the intertron is en route.

After the internet ordeal I wanted a beer. Yet another cultural difference. If I order a beer at a cafe/bar, I know I will get an itty bitty cup for about 2 euro. I opted for the food shop near the apart for some tall boys to watch not an american football game, but a european football game (france vs austria). I prefer the european football anywho.

Classes today went better than before; I think by the end of next week I should have things down pat. I keep filling up my bag with more and more tricks to pull out according to different groups' interests and/or levels. This means I can't really plan each class in detail, but I think it works better to be more flexible. Obviously if a group is having trouble responding to a text, I shouldn't give them more articles, but rather prepare another text for the next session that's more appropriate to their level and with a subject they can identify with.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll try and post pics from bordeaux sometime soon.